>>Last evening I went to hear Kevin Phillips speak in Alumni Gym, guestof the UT Issues Committee. Phillips is the author of the recentAmerican Theocracy. I knew what he would say but went bc I felt hemight have a small audience here in Bush territory. There were about200 people there, not even filling the auditorium halfway, mostlyacademics and Unitarians. Thank God for Unitarians.

Phillips admitted a little trepidation about discussing religion inTN, said his tour was arranged intentionally with the Atlanta suburbsfirst, then Louisville KY, then TN. But he should have guessed thathis audience would not be made up of readers of the Left Behindseries.

He spoke two hours without notes, obviously despises the Bushes, butalso disgusted with Democrats. He seemed tired, as if he was justdoing this out of some moral obligation and was eager to get home toCT. He was not here to make Michael Moore jokes.

A student asked if Phillips had any observations about the under-30generation. He said that they are pretty much an enigma to him, butone thing he was certain of is that they are going to have to worryahead unlike their parent's generation, that everyone pretty much knewby the late 40s that the US was on the rise as a world power and lifewould only continue to get better. The current generation does nothave that luxury.

Ed Patrick asked him to comment on the extreme left-wing bias of NPRand PBS and would he consider coming back as commentator on NPR.Phillips was quick to say that the Republicans have come down hard onNPR since the late 70s, that the people at NPR always wanted him to besofter in his criticism and he refused. He said there are not enoughcritical things he can say about Bush, that when we look back and saywho lost America, it will be presidents 41 and 43.

Someone asked if he had any advice as to how the Democrats canrecover. He replied, "If you know of any Democrats with an ON and OFFbutton, it's time to push the ON button. Other than that, I have noadvice."

A student asked how the US might stop the decline, and he replied"Export lawyers. If you send 800,000 out of a million lawyers toChina, I bet you could change Asian history for a long time to come."He didn't elaborate but a review of his '94 book, Arrogant Capital,says:

According to Phillips, the failure of Washington politics "goes farbeyond simplistic talk of gridlock," The growing ineffectiveness ofAmerican government is part of a larger "reversal of fortune" wherepolitical and economic influence has shifted from the grassroots ofAmerica to a new "guardian class" in Washington. Since the 1940s,Phillips observes, Washington has become increasingly dominated by aninterest-group elite which is now so deeply entrenched and soresistant to change that the proper functioning of government isimpossible. For example, Phillips points out that the District ofColumbia bar had fewer than a thousand members in 1950; today it hasover 60,000. The number of journalists in Washington soared from 1,500to 12,000 over the same period. Since 1970, congressional staff hasnearly doubled. And one recent estimate put the number of lobbyists inWashington at 91,000.

Phillips believes that the natural order of American politics and theunique genius of the system is that "bloodless revolutions at theballot box" every generation purge the government of failedestablishments and create new ones. Although it is high time forWashington to undergo one of its periodic renewals, the concentrationof interest-group power and today's "Permanent Washington" make thatimpossible. Today, Phillips writes, our capital has become a city "soenlarged, so incestuous in its dealings, so caught up in its ownprivilege that it no longer seems controllable or even sway-able by thegeneral public."

Phillips draws a number of portentous historical analogies betweenWashington and other great capitals that have seen the rise and fallof power. He points to the degenerative corruption that pervaded suchcities as Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Hapsburg Madrid and The Hague."There is no point in mincing words," he charges, "aging great-powercapitals often become parasitic cultures" and today's Washington "isbeginning to resemble those wayward governmental centers of previousdeclining empires."

One gray-haired, bearded guy in a suit, prob a law professor, prefacedhis question with, "By the way, I'm a lawyer, and if you know of anyjobs in Canada, I'm looking."

Phillips cited statistics for believers in end-times, 45% ofChristians and 55% of Republicans, and talked about the Left Behindseries by LaHaye. He said the Anti-Christ in those books is an oilman with a French adviser. "Why do you think Bush doesn't talk aboutoil and doesn't want anything to do with the French?" He said hethinks Bush's religiosity is sincere, that he truly believes he wasappt'd by God but not Cheney. "When Armageddon comes," he said,"Cheney will not be taken up; he will continue being Cheneyesque."

He said in the next 5-15 years things are going to get rough, whetherthe economy is blasted by either a currency disaster, an oil stoppage,a housing bubble, or another natural disaster, bad times are ahead.He said we're already beginning to see the currency problem as morecountries are switching from the dollar to the Euro in oil and energytransactions. The national debt, about $8 trillion, is coming due. Thebulk of the debt in the United States is private, which is to saycorporate, financial, mortgage, consumer. The national debt numbersare huge, but the private debt is much worse. The international debtthat we have is about $4 trillion, and that's rising rapidly becausewe have to import so much of the manufactured stuff we need, and somuch of the oil. "The Bushes have never been people that made money bybuilding things. They move money around."

From the comments afterward of people near me, I gathered that manyhad not read the book because they seemed surprised by Phillips' grimpredictions for the future.

They were on his side but definitely more subdued as they left the auditorium.

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